Why You Need To Find A Wedding Registry Before You Find A Partner

Text by Sadaf Shaikh

Couples on the brink of marriage are now seeing the wisdom in asking for what they want rather than being stuck with what they don’t

On the night that your beloved and you are finally joined in holy matrimony and retire to your suite, chances are that you will be more excited about tearing the wrapping paper off gifts than each others’ finery. After all, you have your whole life ahead of you for the latter. You ferret your way through a heap of presents to identify the most fetchingly wrapped one and hastily rip the paper off to reveal a shiny blade mixer. A bunch of gifts and three blade mixers later, you decide you want to christen the kitchen apparatus by beating its benefactor to a ripe pulp.

An ideal solution to this gifting conundrum would be a system where you let your friends know in advance, that you’ve really been coveting that dragon egg from Game of Thrones. It may seem bizarre at the outset, but the heart wants what it wants. Maybe that’s why it was deemed essential to finally introduce the wedding registry in India, allowing guests to choose from a definitive list of items that the couple will find good use for. This can include dining paraphernalia and electric appliances for utilitarian newly-weds or holidays and experiences for those who’ve dreamed of secretly shoving their partner off an airplane, and jumping after them armed with a parachute, of course.

Registered gifting also helps you break the vicious gifting cycle. For the uninitiated, here’s how it works. You are presented with an unoriginal photo-frame which you add to the ever-increasing pile of prezzies also inhabited by the cherubic angel showpiece, the generic mug set and the photo frame among others. These are promptly brought out whenever there is a wedding to attend. The recipients of this gift then jettison it from their pile of presents to be passed on to another unsuspecting couple. In some cases, Karma decides to intervene and the universe conspires to propel those very same items into your unwilling hands.

We’ve scoured the internet for the perfect wedding registry, and economist Sudha Maheshwari’s For My Shaadiis India’s first. It allows couples to categorise high-value gifts as ‘chip-in products’ letting their friends contribute to exorbitant gifts as per their budget. As a sweet gesture, newlyweds can also return to their registry page and send out thank you notes to guests who bought them gifts from their wish list. The portal, which also has a smorgasbord of categories to choose from, will leave you spoilt for choice.

With couples increasingly turning to gifting registries as the norm rather than the exception, there’s one tradition we’re going to look back on with fond remembrance. The exaggerated exchange of ‘Oh, you really didn’t have to get me anything. Your blessings are all I need’ which is countered with a tearful ‘But you’re like a daughter/son to me, I obviously had to!’